


Obsolescence

by Silmerion



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Gen, Loss of Identity, Post-Volume 5, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silmerion/pseuds/Silmerion
Summary: Ruby's silver eyes save the team, but leave her bedridden and drained. Yang can't stand how helpless she feels as her sister hurts, but she's not the only one feeling helpless.





	Obsolescence

Yang found Oscar outside, slouching against the wall of the inn bordering the backyard, watching the sun wave goodnight behind a distant mountain range. The boy was still dawdling his way through the tea Blake had brewed them while Yang was in with Ruby. The southern reaches of Atlas were sheltered somewhat from the northern continental cold, but even here early fall wound wisps of cruel chill through the boreal forest. Yet Oscar only held his warm cup loosely by the handle as he ruminated.  A memory presented itself, one of the many conversations with Ozpin that had seemed so indulgent and well-meaning before everything went sideways, and she realized that he held his drink the same way the headmaster had used to back at Beacon. Whether that was how Oscar had always done it or a result of their ongoing personality merge was impossible to know, but the resemblance set Yang’s fire straining against its chains for the umpteenth time that day. Yang kept it from reaching her eyes, willing herself with deep breaths to calm. Whether this conversation was as long as necessary or prematurely short wasn’t up to her, not really, but she would control what she could nevertheless.

Supporting Ruby after her practices with Ozpin had been hard enough. The two had started in earnest after making landfall in Atlas, and whatever wringer their reincarnated headmaster ran her through left her limp and anemic, barely able to keep her eyes open. Yang could see that malaise setting everyone on edge, but her own response was so acute that she barely had the mind for them, so focused she became on caring for her through the fits. Today’s ambush, when she had finally bore witness to her sister’s eyes in their terrible radiance, and her comatose form that followed, had left her with a screaming tension headache, a cold sweat, and an apoplectic instinct to _demand_.

Oscar turned to the door as it slid open and met Yang’s gaze, offering an awkward smile in acknowledgement. “Hey,” he greeted her vaguely. “It’s, uh - sunset’s nice. Heh heh.”

Oscar barely knew how to talk to many of them at the best of times, and this afternoon’s events certainly hadn’t greased his tongue. Internally Yang cursed - getting Ozpin right off the bat would have been the easy way - but outwardly she returned the smile. “It is,” she said. “Ruby’s doing okay, by the way. She’s sleeping again.”

Oscar let out a tight sigh of relief, sliding to the ground. “Good,” he said, voice more at ease now. “That’s good. Ozpin said she’d be fine, she just needed rest, but - well, you know.” He shrugged then, as if hoping Yang knew enough for the both of them.

“I know,” Yang agreed. She hopped the steps off the small porch, then turned and slung her arms over the rail, easing herself into a friendly lean against it. “Speaking of Oz, though - he in there right now? I’d like to talk to him.” She hoped that sounded casual enough.

Oscar’s expression strained. No such luck. “Ruby stuff, right?” Not that it had been a hard guess, Yang supposed. She huffed her concession.

“Yeah. Ruby stuff.”

Oscar did her the favor of looking guilty as he replied, “He’s not, um, _in_ at the moment. He was piloting me for basically the whole fight, and I think it took it out of him.”

Yang cursed again, this time audibly, and wheeled toward the edge of the clearing, resting her elbows against the banister now. “Bummer.” His absence was like a soaking blanket over her focus, choking in its relief. The shock emphasized the null volume where her plan should have been, and her thoughts echoed heavily in that silence, weighing her brow into a scowl.

Oscar sighed at Yang’s unmistakable frustration. He busied his hands with each other, curling and uncurling them against each other in a nervous dance. “I’m sorry, Yang. If - if I’d - I just need to...need him less. I’m sorry.”

 _Need him less._ What had Yang hoped to wrest from this exchange? Ozpin’s oath that he wasn’t killing Ruby? His permission to observe their practices from now on, sit in on their lessons? Could Yang make any maneuver that would impart more than a fleeting illusion of control? _Need_ could define a relationship, but its primitives were relevance, function.

Yang shook her head to clear the voices. Maybe, now that she had her time free, she could work them off a bit. The kid seemed like he could use that, too, and she thought that might feel good right now, to work through someone else’s troubles. She tossed her head back, eyeing Oscar over her shoulder. “Aw, c’mon kiddo, don’t beat yourself up like that. Wanna beat me up instead? I’ve gotta blow off some steam anyway.”

Oscar bore his confusion plainly. “You can still _go_ after today? And hey, doesn’t getting beat up do, er, the _opposite_ of blow off steam for you?”

Yang chuckled. “No offense? But I’ll be impressed if you land _one_ punch.” Yang knew that was a little petty. _Maybe_ she had some lingering resentment toward Ozpin she was letting bleed through. And, in fairness to herself, pettiness could be a good motivator - while her sister had never cared for hand-to-hand, Ruby had always been too eager to prove herself not to bite on taunts like that.

Oscar’s flinch betrayed his somewhat quieter enthusiasm. “Ahaha, I guess you’re right,” he muttered, papering a nervous grin over his cracked facade.

“Seriously, though,” she eased up, “it’d just be light sparring, maybe some exercises. That’s what Ruby and I did back when I’d drag her out for this.” She hummed, mulling it over. “You can use the cane if you want. I won’t be able to give, like, amazing tips on form and stuff if you do, but fighting’s all the same, more or less. Might be nice to talk shop with someone who doesn’t know literally your every thought, yeah?”

Oscar appeared to consider that, then rose to his feet, nodding. “Sure, all right. But let’s do hand-to-hand.”

Yang strode further out onto the lawn, dry and browning grass crunching under her boots. She watched, at ease, hand on her hip and an appraising grin on her face, as Oscar strode to position and adopted a fighting stance. Not bad - too settled to be nimble, but good balance, arms in the right place. Again, Yang wondered what he’d picked up in this life and what he’d picked up elsewhen. “First swing is yours, squirt,” she announced, wagging her other hand in a challenging wave, not bothering to square up.

Oscar frowned at the gesture. “I don’t...know that I want it, actually. I’m not sure I can capitalize. You go first.”

Yang cocked an eyebrow at his deference. “I mean, you’re probably right, but if you start on the defensive, you’ll be there as long as I want you to be,” she warned.  
  
Oscar’s frown deepened. “I know. But I think you’ll take it easy, and I think you’ll show me what I need to see.” Precisely how much of Ozpin’s personality was heritable? Did it include a penchant for cryptic one-liners? If she was going to really instruct the kid she’d have to get him on offense eventually, but for now she supposed she could watch his core, his eyes, his tells.

Yang shrugged and took a ready stance. Of course Oscar was correct - she’d never go hard on a largely untrained child. And anyway, this session would be about him, not her, if she had anything to say about it. Yang swatted away any voices asserting the contrary; they passed over her face as they departed, an unhappy twitch of her otherwise placid features.

Her first jab sought Oscar’s shoulder in a motion Yang might describe as _meandering_. It had actually been quite some time since she had needed to pull punches - sparring with Tai had been a tremendous workout for her sedentary sad-sack self, and her amateur services hadn’t been in high demand at Beacon. Telegraphing a strike exactly enough that it was informative but urgent, harmless but threatening, was an art she hadn’t had to practice since training with Ruby, and this one came out like a rough draft, too sluggish and glancing even for a warm-up. But she got the information she was seeking anyway: the evasive lean Oscar fell into was sloppy, full of excess and inefficient motion, but the reaction itself was preternaturally quick.

Yang allowed a grin to lift her features as she retracted her arm, falling again into her ready stance; Oscar took a moment longer to reset, ushering his hands back to neutral with his gaze, as if they would come to rest in the wrong place if he weren’t watching. “You’ve got good reflexes, kid,” she said. “But -”

This time she led with her back arm, and sure enough, Oscar was out of the way before her fist was anywhere near him. But now she followed through with a restrained roundhouse, tapping Oscar’s unguarded flank just hard enough to carry his motion far off target. He fell stumbling to the side, yelping in surprise. “- we need to get some fundamentals in you.”

“Ugh,” Oscar groaned as he pulled himself to his knees. “I could have told you that. I get flashes of the theory now and then, I can see how my body _should_ be moving, but it’s…” he trailed off, shrugging.

“You and Ruby from way back when have kind of similar problems, I think,” Yang reflected, mulling Oscar’s explanation. “She’d been training as a huntress for a few years before Dad trusted me enough to let me teach her. She already had most of the instincts, but she could only really apply them with her scythe - Qrow got to her early, and Dad and I both think she missed out on some fundamentals because of it. ‘Course, Ruby’d always say she disagreed with our definition of ‘fundamentals’,” she finished, rolling her eyes for emphasis as she made the air quotes.

Oscar weighed that for a moment. “Was she right?”

Yang shrugged. “I mean, I obviously don’t think so? But I get the objection - not like I’d be much good with a scythe. Anyway, Ruby knew the action she wanted to _take_ but not how to achieve it without her weapon, so she’d get way up in her head about it. Sound familiar?”

Oscar’s mouth tightened. “Yeah. It really does.” With a grunt, he stood fully and raised his fists, steeling his expression. “Give it to me again.”

Later, Yang noted with some chagrin that her plan to calm them both down had only made things worse for Oscar. In retrospect, the boy had been fighting on tilt from the first exchange, and his gradually increasing exhaustion had only exacerbated his ire. Her advice on the particulars of movement and positioning had been received with proportionate scorn. Yang had suggested calling it off once already, but Oscar persisted, his frustration growing with every flubbed reaction, every whiffed punch. “Kid, I really think we oughta call it,” she finally insisted, gesturing to the west. “It’ll be dark soon anyway.”

Oscar’s breathing was coming somewhat raggedly now. He eyed the mountains but made no move to relax. “I can keep going.”

“That might not be a good idea. You’re angry and tired.”

“But _you_ can handle it, you’re _fine_ ,” he all but hissed through his teeth. “How do you people _do_ this? It’s downright superhuman.”

Yang cocked her hip and rested her prosthetic hand against it, bemused. Now _that_ was funny. “Hate to break it to ya, but you're the most superhuman person here, mister Immortal Fairytale Wizard. The rest of us just did our time. You’ll get there! Seriously, I -”

Oscar’s exasperated glare, surprisingly intense, bore down on Yang then. “Well, I don’t _have_ time! The world is in danger _now_. All of you - all of us are in danger. Ruby saved us today with the eyes, but she still can’t command them, and Oz doesn’t know when she’ll be able to.” Wait, what? Ruby had remained tight-lipped about their sessions, claiming her silence was at Ozpin’s behest, but had promised things were going well. Did Oscar think so? Did Ozpin? “We got lucky, we could’ve been -”

“Hey,” Yang interjected. She hadn’t intended to get defensive, but then in her mind’s eye she saw her sister lying there, drawing short breaths, wearily mustering a smile after a particularly awful night, and her temperature soared. “Hey, hey, hey. You _know_ Ruby’s working herself to the bone for this.”

“Of course I know that!” Oscar exclaimed, but his own tone seemed to take him aback. He brought a hand to his temples, massaging. “I know she is. She’s the toughest, hardest worker I’ve ever seen. She scares me sometimes. I just wish she didn’t _need_ to. This is all so much. Putting it all on one person is...it’s cruel, I think.” Oscar’s expression screwed up with guilt. “Ozpin’s sure this is how it has to happen. And I’m not sure how long I’ll be around to argue with him.”

A dark place within Yang wanted to shout its agreement. The part that grudgingly admitted it understood her mother, that feared and mistrusted the headmaster just as much, that saw a certain sense in her craven disavowal of responsibility. Hopelessness proffered freedom, of a kind: surety that there was never anything you could have done meant all choices were equally inconsequential.

Yang couldn’t give her self-pity the pleasure, for Oscar or herself. “It’s not all on her,” she disagreed. “None of us are gonna let it be all on her. Because we’re gonna be there for her, okay? Just like we have been. Look, none of us are slacking either. You’re out here banging your head against a wall because you _know_ she can’t do this without us.”

Oscar shook his head. “I’m not enough yet.”

“You will be, if you keep at it.”

“What if I’m not enough in time?”

“Then Ruby will take what she can get. That dummy wouldn't know how to ask for more.” Nostalgia swept Yang’s face for a moment, eyes far away. But just as quickly she was back, grinning. “Besides, even if you give up, she’ll always have me, and I happen to be a fucking world-class sister.” Oscar snorted at that, clearing the air a bit. “Come on, let’s get inside. And, uh, when Oz wakes up, will you tell him I wanted to see about helping out with Ruby’s lessons?”

Oscar returned Yang’s grin as they started walking. “Yeah, I will.”

Never mind that Yang knew why she used to drag Ruby out for hand-to-hand lessons; never mind that it had never really mattered if Ruby learned or not, that Ruby was always going to be fine; never mind that Yang had just needed to show herself that she was taking care of her sister, and never mind that sometimes Yang had no idea how to do that anymore. She would do what she could. If Ruby was slipping away, she’d sprint after her. She’d claw blind into the darkness. She’d grip harder.

**Author's Note:**

> I still don't have a good feel for how to write Ruby, but I enjoy writing _about_ Ruby, and these characters intersect on that subject in interesting ways, I think.


End file.
